[ Because some readers might have astigmatism, because search engines spiders cannot see that text and because it helps elaborate the philosophy in continuation, it is good to begin with repeating the content of the graphic above. ]
“Wisdom may emanate from a single great mind. Information may flow in all directions within and between groups. Knowledge is best exchanged between two star-crossed minds.” naulej.org believes the last is the most promising phenomenon - the former two benefit from it anyway - and the least exploited. This project exists to provide a forum for two minds that fit a two-piece puzzle to find each other.
Knowledge is not exclusive to any limited domain, or to islands of individuals or groups. The word implies participation and consensus. You can work alone, but usually on something that is of interest to a wider set. Academics and researchers know this aspect of knowledge, so they often work in teams. At the very least, even the lone workers encounter ‘peer-review’”, meant in part to bridge islands.
There is, however, the question of choice. In a team, you may not always have just the right people around you. Your team is probably not the optimal team, if you consider open global recruitment as a hypothetical option. Your reviewer is likely not the first person you would choose yourself. Like family and unlike friends, you rarely get to choose your teachers, only courses, if you are lucky. Teachers, in turn, sometimes wish they had keener students. There are people out there that complement your station in the realm of knowledge more than those you have access to or information of. PhD supervision is surely not the only good way to foster new research that individuals wish to take up. Great new research could come from interested, committed and capable individuals finding dedicated supervision or perhaps through routine but temporary consultations with different people, each ideally matched to the momentary need, at different stages.
Countless students around the world need something. Some of them may need that which you can provide best. They may have teachers who cannot, in one sense or another. Your regular students may take for granted something they are offered everyday. A student across the world is likely to need and value it more.
Medicine and teaching are two noblest of professions. If a doctor could cure someone ailing at the other end of the world or if multiple people could benefit from the same cure, performed just once, how many doctors would pass the chance? Teachers have that possibility. Rather than remote robotic surgery and doses of tangible substances, pedagogy deals largely with text, sound and visual media that the internet is well-equipped to handle. However, early adoptions took the easiest, obvious routes. As classroom instruction was modelled on industrial production of goods in batch processing, so were digital libraries and open courseware modelled on physical libraries and live course modules. But IT has the potential to do more than just mimic the real world systems.
The online social movement allows for more than mere ‘contact and transfer’, whether in one-to-many or many-to-many configurations. It allows people to express individuality and in turn pick and choose, one-to-one. It enables matching pairs of individuals ideally suited to each other, be it for research, learning or mentoring*. naulej.org hopes to provide a one-stop shop for precisely and exclusively this sort of optimal matching of complementary minds.
Note, hence, that this is not a social networking site. You cannot forms large lists of people and stay connected to them. This project is meant for uniting people in pairs and temporary pairs at that. Ideally, each post will reflect one such pair and will expire once it serves its purpose. As members with a teacher’s role may wish to continually offer their time for their chosen interest in general, ‘Offers’ may be allowed to remain published for longer than ‘Calls’. For details on member roles, read the section on ‘How To’.
[* naulej.org intends to cater to strictly academic or professional mentoring, but does not actively enforce this, leaving it to the discretion of members. The project cannot presume to dictate the scope of the term 'knowledge' if we are to truly look at it differently. We did change its spelling.]
